Tetsuo Time

This entry was prompted by this tweet and this article that was linked from said tweet as well as discussions I've had on PC Gamer previously on a couple of different occasions. It seems to me that some conclusions are naturally being jumped to even by some software "industry" big wigs such as Mr. Stallman. 


( Read more... )

Recently I came across a video with a guy showing off how well Windows 7 runs on older hardware. He had a 1.3Ghz Celeron M notebook that has pretty much the same hardware inside as my notebook. He showed how it took a little less than half an hour to install. How it boots up pretty quickly. How each application it comes with starts up pretty fast and how fast media center runs on it. (I lost the video otherwise I would have posted it here)

That's all well and good. However on older hardware such as that there's one major caveat. It can't run aero or any of its effects. Now you might say what do you expect on such old hardware?Actually, having experienced the other two major operating systems on similar hardware I expect quite a bit actually. I'm also not too amazed.... I mean Vista is practically the only modern OS that has performance problems on said hardware.

My notebook, which is the same as his apart from brand and look of the chassis can... even with its intel integrated graphics run all the effects in the 3D card composited windowing engines of either Linux or Mac OS X Leopard. But apparently not even with Windows 7 would it be able to run Aero glass or any of its effects.

Not only that but in Leopard it can run Core Image hardware accelerated so I can get the blurring behind certain transparent things such as the menubar, menus, drop down sheets etc. and I can also get the effect in dashboard when you open a widget that's kind of like you dropped it onto a table of water with the ripples... it all doesn't run slow either.

When I tried Linux with Compiz I could get the respective effects there too. So what's wrong with Windows? They are accessing the same hardware. Is their way so much more demanding than Mac OS X that it can't run on the same hardware without turning all that off? It could be that the drivers just aren't ready but it could also be that Microsoft just isn't supporting it because people have the perception that it would slow down the computer. Well..... under Leopard and Linux it doesn't.

I found this article last night but only got around to writing something about it today. I find that teacher's reaction to her students interest in learning about Linux interesting. She said she tried linux in college but perhaps she just sat in front of a computer running it and just used it for a couple of minutes at the most. She seems pretty ignorant to non-windows operating systems. Coming from that view point I can understand where she's coming from. She is right that Windows is on a majority of computers out there but I don't think that's from being the best really.

Besides, learning Linux has never hurt anyone. In fact learning it can only help. When I was in high school I participated in the New Mexico Super Computer challenge and there they taught us Unix and that was a good thing. I also later on learned some Linux on my own when a friend had given me shell access to a server for a while and I used it to host my web site and Palace Chat server for a while.

This only helped when I later got a Mac and I can now delve into the unix side of it if I want to. It's called broadening your horizons. In my opinion she might benefit from taking some classes on Linux or other operating systems and broaden her horizons. That is if it's not true that Windows is being forced down upon them by some kind of Microsoft conspiracy in the education system.

But look at this. Wow, I never realized how volatile the subject could be... and it kind of makes me feel bad for writing this also but this is my opinion and I stand by it. Some people out there are crazy and it's a good thing that he didn't publicly publish her name in his blog article.

But the upside to this is she has said she has learned more in the past five days about the tech world than she has learned in five years. That can only be a good thing. I just regret that she may also have taken the brunt of a major flaming. Although apparently no one called her and she didn't hear anything about it at work.

It turns out that as it is often times the whole story wasn't told. Apparently the student was also being disruptive in class. So I can understand a bit more her reaction.

I found this article last night but only got around to writing something about it today. I find that teacher's reaction to her students interest in learning about Linux interesting. She said she tried linux in college but perhaps she just sat in front of a computer running it and just used it for a couple of minutes at the most. She seems pretty ignorant to non-windows operating systems. Coming from that view point I can understand where she's coming from. She is right that Windows is on a majority of computers out there but I don't think that's from being the best really.

Besides, learning Linux has never hurt anyone. In fact learning it can only help. When I was in high school I participated in the New Mexico Super Computer challenge and there they taught us Unix and that was a good thing. I also later on learned some Linux on my own when a friend had given me shell access to a server for a while and I used it to host my web site and Palace Chat server for a while.

This only helped when I later got a Mac and I can now delve into the unix side of it if I want to. It's called broadening your horizons. In my opinion she might benefit from taking some classes on Linux or other operating systems and broaden her horizons. That is if it's not true that Windows is being forced down upon them by some kind of Microsoft conspiracy in the education system.

But look at this. Wow, I never realized how volatile the subject could be... and it kind of makes me feel bad for writing this also but this is my opinion and I stand by it. Some people out there are crazy and it's a good thing that he didn't publicly publish her name in his blog article.

But the upside to this is she has said she has learned more in the past five days about the tech world than she has learned in five years. That can only be a good thing. I just regret that she may also have taken the brunt of a major flaming. Although apparently no one called her and she didn't hear anything about it at work.

It turns out that as it is often times the whole story wasn't told. Apparently the student was also being disruptive in class. So I can understand a bit more her reaction.

This week I have been doing some experiments with installing linux to the hard drive on the Dell Laptop I have here. The final result? I'm reformatting that laptop right now and reinstalling Windows XP.

( details inside.......... )

I feel a need to talk about this because I'm kind of not satisfied with how some people have reacted or their lack of reaction to Apple's new application called "Spaces". Most people who do post some kind of reaction just say linux had it first which is also inaccurate because the X11 server or windowing system actually isn't Linux specific. It's more accurate to say most other Unix and Unix like platforms have had virtual desktops for many years. Not even a lot of the Unix people I know have talked a peep about Spaces.. maybe they just don't care?

Also Windows has had virtual desktops from a variety of software especially alternative desktop managers since literally last century. One of the best desktops on windows to have virtual desktops is Litestep. In fact I can't think of one operating system that doesn't have an implimentation of virtual desktops either by the company who made it or by a third party except for the old Mac OS before X... even Windows 3.1 had a alernative shell that had virtual desktops believe it or not.

In Apple's defense though I think NeXTSTEP (OS X's ancestor and which also inspired Litestep) but that could have been afterstep on linux in the late 90's had some kind of virtual desktop support since the 80's which predates most other modern systems. I also still think it's nice to see Apple officially embracing virtual desktops and integrating them into the OS so they might work better than third party solutions which I am currently using (desktop manager).

*Edit* I've read the first OS to have a virtual scrolling desktop was Amiga OS in the mid-80's It's kind of amusing to me to see Steve Jobs present "Spaces" as if it's a brand new innovation.

I want to slip in another 3D screenshot here this time from the game "sIn" the sense of depth in this shot is amazing you can practically see all the way down the mine shaft and the lightbulbs look really good:

Here is a screenshot of what I am playing with right at this moment, Elive CD Linux with Enlightenment, Blueheart and matching Blueheart GTK2 and 1 theme and matching old Blueheart xmms skin since I can't find the newer one.

click here to view

It's old school goodness!

I tried Kororaa XGL today on my laptop. What is it? It's a version of Linux that has the new 3D card accelerated desktop for Linux called XGL. The cool thing about that is that it being 3D Card accelerated makes it more like OS X with it's quartz extreme.

( Computer geek stuff inside )

I was going to write about this as a part of the previous entry I just posted but i figured that it would be better to put this as a seperate entry ( More inside )

I have been playing lots of livecd's lately with mixed results.
( Stuff about operating systems inside heavy use of wikipedia )